by Diana Graves
I stepped out of their path so they could come in, and Tristan walked past me without so much as a friendly acknowledgment. Whatever. Michael stared after him and rolled his eyes.
“Katie’s here?” Michael asked, looking over at sleeping beauty on the couch. His words were loud and I flinched, because she stopped snoring then.
I couldn’t think of an answer that Katie would like. She didn’t want Michael or anyone knowing that Jed had been raping her, so there really wasn’t anything I could say except, “Ask Katie.”
Michael moved to wake her but Tristan stopped him. “Later,” he said. A look passed between them, and I got the vibe that Tristan had indeed been keeping his thumb down on Michael; micromanaging his life as though he was a child. It was all there in their eyes. Michael looked defiant, and Tristan looked challenging. Tristan had better watch out. Some theorize that the harder you hold a child down, the harder they push you away. Tristan may not be doing Michael any favors; he may very well be harming his development into a healthy little vamp.
“Shall we take this into the room before we wake Katie and Fauna,” I suggested.
“Yes,” said Tristan.
Michael sat on my bed and Tristan stood, looking out the window. I sat myself down on top of a random box. It read, “BOOKS,” in big black marker.
“So, what’s up?” I asked quietly.
“Nil is in trouble,” Tristan said. He turned to me, looking down at me, as he did so often. Nil was the name Nick gave himself after he woke up a vampire, as in nothing, nada, zilch. He had some serious self-esteem issues. In fact, the last I checked he was crazy, like almost Alistair crazy. “The man who runs the halfway house Seth put him in wants him out.”
“Why,” I asked, leaning forward a bit. I was trying to ignore the way Tristan was literally looking down his nose at me.
“Seth says Nil picks fights with whoever will fight him, and that he’s fucked everything with a pussy within a ten mile radius.”
“Well,” I breathed with a smile. “I had no idea our brother had such a libido.” Michael laughed then. Tristan just looked at me with a face that said I wasn’t funny, I will never be funny, and if I make one more smart comment, so help him Goddess, BANG, to the moon with me! That thought made me smirk and his frown deepened, if that were at all possible.
“I mean, um, has Seth spoken with the man who runs the halfway house?” I asked, trying to regain what little respect Tristan might have for me.
“Of course,” he said in a tone that let me know there was no respect for me in him at all. Well, that was good to know. At least I couldn’t disappoint him. “He told Seth that he has to think of the safety of the other vampires in his care.”
“Is Nick really being that aggressive with them?” I asked.
“It’s not that, Raina,” he said. “Nil is very close to being marked.”
Now, that made me sit up.
“Marked?” Michael questioned.
“Marked is what they call non-humans who have been delivered an automatic death warrant. Mark stands for mandated right to kill.” I gave Michael a cocked eyebrow. He wasn’t human anymore, and someone should have told him this stuff. “A human has to do something very bad to be placed on death row and even then, they’re rarely killed. Usually our taxes pay for their room and board for the rest of their natural lives. However, when it comes to non-humans, Michael, all there needs to be is a proposal of the mark by any American citizen to any judge. The judge decides if the mark is to be accepted. The person being marked has no say, no defense and no right to even know about the accusations. Once the mark is placed, it is up to a bounty hunter…like Ruy, to hunt him or her down and kill them. It’s a bias system, ran by prejudice.”
“They can’t just kill him!” Michael very nearly yelled.
“The courts argue that they can’t detain non-humans as safely and securely as humans, which is true, but that doesn’t excuse the ease of conviction, lack of representation, no notification of charges and harshness of the punishment.” I turned to Tristan. “Shit, Tristan. What are we going to do?”
“Well, we can’t help at all if the mark goes through, but he’s going to need a place to live after Thursday.” Tristan finally took a seat on the bed next to Michael. “That’s when they’re kicking him out.”
“Can’t he stay with us?” Michael asked Tristan. Tristan said no. “Why?”
“I have a one bedroom apartment. I can’t afford a bigger one right now. There’s no room.”
“Could he stay with Seth?” I asked and Tristan said no. “Mom?” and again, Tristan said no. “So, you came here to ask me to take in Nick? How the hell am I supposed to do that, Tristan? I don’t even have a job, let alone my own place!” I took in a deep breath and collected myself. “I have a week to somehow make room in my life for a little boy. I can’t have Nick here, not in the state he’s in. I have the boy’s safety to think about.”
“So, you would abandon our brother to die?!” Tristan shouted at me.
I couldn’t believe I was considering this, but what choice did I have? “Ruy has offered me an apprenticeship. He says it pays well. I don’t think I’ll have enough money for first and last month’s rent on a place by the end of the week, but I’ll see what I can do.”
“Is that the best you can do?” Tristan asked.
I opened my mouth to say something out of anger, but stopped myself. Family wasn’t supposed to be a burden. “Yes, Tristan. Taking a job I hate and trying to find a place to raise a little boy and take care of Nick is the best I can fucking do?”
How did we get like this? Tristan and I used to be so close. I used to look forward to his frequent visits. I killed an evil man, so what? He killed a man too, or had he forgotten about Paul. He had no right to look down on me. But, I didn’t rub it in his face because I knew it hurt him. I knew he was still in counseling over taking Paul’s life.
Tristan said nothing, he stood and he left the room. Michael and I sat in silence, listening to him walk to the door, opened it and close it behind him.
“So, I better get going,” said Michael as he slid off my bed. “Tristan’s my ride.”
“Don’t you guys fly?” I joked, lightening the tension in the room a good bit.
Michael smiled then, “Not all of us.” He gave me a light hug, “nice fangs, sissy.”
I covered my mouth with my hand and elbowed him with the opposite arm. “You too, dork.” Michael smiled big, showing off his teeth, sharp and deadly. They looked out of place in his kind boyish face.
ONE LAST DREAM
ADIA WAS THE vampire of my dreams ever since I was infected with the disease. It was her blood that ran through my veins, and even though she could not come to me in person, she mentored me as any vampire would their offspring. Only, she did it through the psychic connection all vampires have with their makers. She could teach me in theory only because I was not a vampire. She spoke of controlling a hunger I couldn’t relate to, and how to ensnare someone with my gaze, though I could not do that yet. However, with my new vampire teeth I could at least practice feeding.
My mouth was hovering over her neck as I took in her scent. I swept her golden locks out of the way, taking time to enjoy their buoyancy and softness.
“What’s taking so long, Raina? You know where to strike, so strike,” she demanded. Normally demands put me off, but not Adia’s. I could say it was her elegant beauty or enduring British accent that dislodged the chip from my shoulder, but in truth she was my maker, my mother. I could never be angry with her, never go against her in anything. The reality of that scared me. I was her slave. I’d die for her if it came to that, and I barely knew her at all. It was a vampire thing, an alien thing. But, I had no choice in it.
“Okay.”
I licked my lips and carefully put my mouth on her neck. Her flesh was cold on my lips. I closed my eyes and bit down softly, but I couldn’t bring myself to break her skin. It wasn’t just because she was my mommy vampire, or that
I was a vegan half elf. Biting someone just felt like a very indecent thing to do. Just the thought of causing someone undue pain made me cringe.
“What’s wrong?” she said. My mouth was still on her neck. Her muscles and tendons moved under my lips and teeth, and the feel of it freaked me out. I backed away and put my hand over my mouth.
“I can’t do it,” I said, and she turned around and rolled her eyes at me. “It’s not like biting into an apple. Apples don’t move or breathe. They don’t feel pain, or cry out.”
“I won’t cry out either,” she said. “Bite me, Raina. Now.”
It was a command, and I could not deny her. I felt compelled to sink my teeth into her flesh, even as the thought of it made me feel sick. I simply had to. I had no control over my hands as they grabbed her and held her firmly. My mouth was on her neck before I realized it and my teeth sank in, breaking her skin, tearing through flesh. Instantly blood poured into my mouth. My fangs acted like two straws and Adia’s heart did all the work for me as it pumped hot blood into my mouth and down my throat. In my head I was screaming, but my hands were still holding her down, my teeth were still plunged into her skin and my tongue was still lapping up her blood, so hot I could feel the warmth of it travel down my throat to warm my belly.
“Enough,” she whispered, and I moved away so quickly I nearly fell over. I spat her blood out of my mouth and rubbed my stomach in a weak attempt to sooth it. “You did well for your first time, but next time I don’t want to have to force it on you.”
“I don’t want to do that again, please,” I said, and I sounded so pathetic. I even had the beginnings or tears in my eyes.
“You have to feed. The alternative is no alternative. You either drink the blood your body needs or bad things happen, love.”
“Like what?” I asked quietly.
She moved closer to me and her neck was completely healed. It was a dream after all… “If you starve yourself—you will feel a hunger too terrible to bear. But, if you do bear it you have madness to look forward to. And, if even then you refuse to drink you get to experience something few do as your living-dead body begins to rapidly rot from the inside out. You’ll stink of it; bits will fall from you like rotten fruit from a sick tree. In the end you’d plead for someone to wheel your putrid carcass out into the sun.”
I swallowed hard and damned my habit of picturing everything people say. “Well, when you put it that way…” But at the mention of crazy vampires something else, someone else came to mind.
“Adia, I know you told me that pyrokinesis isn’t one of your talents, but do you have any advice in controlling it?” I asked.
“Are you bringing this up because of what happened at Bastion Fatal?” she asked as she wiped the blood from my chin.
“You saw?” But, of course she saw. Adia didn’t leave me in the day, not completely. She always knew at least in part what was happening. “Alistair…,”
“Shhh,” she interrupted me. “I know what he’s done. He offered you a place in his collective.”
“Not just that. He called to my flame,” I said. “And, I couldn’t stop him.”
She sat back down beside me in the dark dream world we always met in, a dense forest. Thick beams of moonlight shot through the branches of tall evergreens, and green moss grew where it could, which was everywhere.
“He killed a man,” I closed my eyes and when I opened them everything was different. Adia wasn’t strong enough to always control my dreams.
I was back at Bastion Fatal and Adia was gone, but I knew she was watching. Alistair sat on his throne. Damon stood behind me, and Seth stood by Alistair. It was exactly as before, save for one tiny difference. The floor was riddled with stinking rotting corpses. I looked up at the ceiling to avoid the sight of their broken bodies and their milky dead eyes, but found only a large mirror reflecting the image. I didn’t remember looking up when I was in his throne room before, so I couldn’t be sure if there really was a mirror up there in real like, or if it was my creation.
“What an interesting dream,” Alistair said. “I think you have just about everyone here. Even that boy I accidently killed when I was just a lad. I spooked his horse and he fell, you see. Back then people died of such simple injuries…”
I didn’t respond to dream-Alistair’s comment. I turned and ran out of the room. I slammed open the doors that would have led to a wide corridor, but instead they led to the very room I was trying to leave. Another reflection of the same gore, but not anther mirror. It was real. Both Alistairs stood and made their way toward me. They climbed over the corpses, walking over them as one might walk over driftwood on a beach. And, he was just as casual about it.
“No, stop!” I yelled at him. “Stop right there!” But, he didn’t stop. My dream had gotten away from me and become a nightmare. Damn it.
When the Alistairs reached me there was just one, but one was bad enough. He wasn’t happy, he was calm but mad. Quiet anger was almost worse than loud destructive anger. He reached for me and I backed up into Damon’s back…yes, I was back where I was standing before, but instead of Damon the friend at my back, I had Damon the statue. Alistair pinned me against him and looked down at me. Through his hair I could see his eyes, his lying eyes. Images came to mind, like a movie in fast forward I saw Alistair torturing me; pulling at my limbs on the rack, skinning me alive and dropping acid on my bare meat. I screamed and he grabbed my jaw hard and pulled my face to his.
“You killed Colbert!” he screamed.
“You killed him,” I managed to murmur.
He bent down with lightning speed and bit my face. I felt his teeth cut through my jaw, and I heard the cracking of bone far before the pain was registered in my mind. I screamed and pulled away, only adding to the damage. But, I wasn’t thinking about minimizing damage. I wanted out, away, free of him. If that meant that he kept my jaw then he could have it!
“Alistair!” Adia yelled from someplace unseen. “Alistair, let her go!” she screamed at him, and she had to yell a few more times before he let go, but by then I was limp in his arms. I fell to the floor, atop a dead man with his throat torn out. The pain was beyond unbearable. Odd for a dream, or was I imagining it?
“Adia…” Alistair began. He was hunched over, with blood and thicker things, my things, hanging from his mouth.
Adia put a hand up to stop him and he obeyed. “Leave us.”
“But she—,” he began.
“No!” Adia shouted. “Leaves us.” And, he didn’t look back at me, he simply left. And, not through a door or into shadow either. He disappeared before my eyes, evaporated into nothingness.
I was holding my bloody jaw, or what was left of it when Adia held her hand out to me. Weakly I took it, and the moment my hand touched her we were elsewhere. Again, everything changed as dreams often do. We stood in a grassy field, enjoying the warmth of the sun. My jaw was whole and the pain was gone. I was left panting, confused and scared.
“What a horrible dream,” I said when she did not speak first.
With her back to me Adia said, “That was no dream. I’m afraid he’s found you.”
“Found me? Who, Alistair? That was him, really him?” How did he get in my dream? How could that have been him?
“Yes,” she said. “I should have told you, but I didn’t foresee this; the power of your psychic signal, his violence, you meeting each other. All unforeseeable variables. I’m sorry.” She almost laughed then. “Though, in hindsight it seems obvious.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Alistair and I have a connection. We’ve always been in each other’s head, feeling what the other feels, seeing what the other sees. He is my twin.”
“Twins,” I said more to myself than to her. “Brother and sister.” I looked at her, searching for evidence to support what she just told me. They had the same blue eyes, kind eyes. Her hair was more golden than his, and curly, but they had the same full red lips. “You and Alistair are twins, and he
came into my dream through you!” I wanted to be angry with her. I wanted to shout at her, but raising my voice was the best I could manage.
“You have every right to be angry with me. But getting to know you, my only accessible child; to raise you and feel your love, it was too much to not try.”
“Can’t you put up a wall, so he can’t get in your head—or mine?”
“I can’t shut him out.”
“Why?”
She blinked slowly, and her eyes seemed wider when she opened them. She looked vulnerable, and somehow very sad. “I’ll die if I let go of him.” I gave her silence, because I couldn’t think of a response. My mind was static, busy with emotion but lacking in anything coherent. “I will die without his life keeping me just barely on the precipice of true death.”
“Where are you, Adia? What’s going on?”
“I guess I always knew I’d have to tell you some day. I was just avoiding the inevitable. You’re so full of life; I almost forgot I’m so near death.”
“Adia?”
“You’ve had dreams of a vampire collective, one with a courtyard full of black statues. You’ve dreamt of Mort Villa, but what you were seeing was Bastion Fatal when it was under my rule. Mort Villa was my collective.”
“What happened to it?”
“Hate and fear destroyed it over a hundred years ago. Mort Villa was one of the first collectives in the country, and in the late eighteen-hundreds vampires had no rights, but we were no longer killed on sight. A select few masters were allowed to make small collectives, and for a short while we lived in relative peace. But, Tacoma came onto hard times, scary times. A recession hit and general prejudice became fevered hate backed by perverted laws. It was a powder keg. The city was filled with white settlers, Chinese immigrants and monsters such as myself. Add lack of work and bad history and terrible things happened. After the city brutishly forced all the Chinese immigrants out of the territory, all eyes were on us. Days later Tacoma was set on fire. Many people died, children died. No one knew how the fire was started, but they blamed Mort Villa. We were monsters, even if we did not start the flames, our very existence called for God’s wrath.”